Pouring My Art Out

The day that Europe kicked my ass… part 4…

Posted on August 4, 2015 by pouringmyartout

Well, that is enough of standing on the doorstep of Notre Dame… let’s go in and have a look around, shall we… wait… are you staring at my uneven nostrils again? Cheeky monkey!

Now that is an impressive use of overhead space.

The lighting in Notre Dame is an interesting combination of sunlight streaming through stained glass, artificial lighting, and candles. The light mixes with the smoke from the candles and incense and the dust motes and does strange dances.

This is only our second stop on what turned out to be a very busy day, and it was still early morning.

I was still feeling pretty good.

I mean, my feet were a little beat up after all the walking around and on the Eiffel Tower, but so far so good.

Europe had not yet begun to conquer me.

I like that picture because the camera decided to focus on the candles instead of the windows, and I like the way the stained glass makes a blurry backdrop.

It pays to remember, when visiting churches and cathedrals in Europe, that they are still working houses of worship.

While you are wandering around with the hoard of tourists, try not to trample the little old ladies who just came in to say a quick prayer.

That isn’t just a work of art for you to gawk at, it is also someone’s shrine.

And don’t forget to read the plaques… they can help explain the meaning behind some of the more obscure symbolism.

The candles are not there to provide mood lighting.

They are there because someone lit them for… some religious reason… most likely…

I will admit that there are times when the line between the religious symbolism and more earthly works of art are not clear to me, but I do seem to recall that Joan of Arc was considered to be important for a reason that somehow combined religion and the killing of English soldiers, so of course it makes sense to have her in a church… she heard voices… telling her to kill English soldiers…

I wasn’t kidding about the cathedrals being active places of worship. I don’t just mean that the local people come in to pray. I mean that you and a few hundred other tourists might actually be in there when an actual service is going on… which explains the overpowering density of the incense smoke. Try to be respectful.

Okay, that’s about enough… I am starting to choke on the clouds of incense now… I don’t care how cool it makes the light coming through the stained glass look… I need air…

Thank you, Jesus, for letting us into your dad’s house to take pictures.

Let’s go look at the outside… we haven’t seen the back or the sides yet…

Posted in My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged art, church, current-events, France, history, humor, notre dame, paris, photography, religion | 20 Comments

Just a thought…

Posted on August 4, 2015 by pouringmyartout

I think we should build apartments buildings next to bakeries… and then run air ducts from the bakery to all the rooms… so your room would always smell like fresh-baked bread.

Posted in thinking about stuff | Tagged bakery, bread, current-events, humor, ideas, life, living, philosophy, style | 32 Comments

The day that Europe kicked my ass… part 3… (or); The 1,500 year-long contest to see who could build the fanciest church…

Posted on August 4, 2015 by pouringmyartout

After our epic adventure on the Eiffel Tower, we strolled over to see this place…

You might recognize it… it is a church that is famous both for its architectural beauty and its equal-opportunity, nondiscriminatory bell-ringer hiring practices.

The countries of Europe have a long-standing rivalry… and I don’t only mean in the military sense. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the moment there was a glimmer of light at the end of the Dark Ages, the Europeans began to compete with each other in two important arenas… that of Church and that of State… which were not always clearly separated. We already explored the way that the royal families tried to outdo one another by building the biggest, fanciest palaces in my hilarious series ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and French’ last week. I think we covered the houses of the rich and royal. Now we will explore the houses of worship…

For fifteen hundred years or more, the Europeans have been vying with each other to see who could build the fanciest churches. Oh sure, they say it is all done for the glory of god, but you can clearly see, looking back, how national and even civic pride played a huge part in this game of one-upmanship.

Now we, as tourists… and even those of us who aren’t at all religious… get to enjoy the benefits of this contest.

And it never hurts to pay attention to how old these buildings are. I mean, they were built way back before heavy machinery or even blueprints had been invented.

Obviously, the churches were judged for their sheer size, but there was much more to it than that. The intricacy of the carving work, the gracefulness of the symmetry, the grandeur of the entryway, even the proper placement of the gargoyles, all played a part in being chosen as one of Europe’s grand cathedrals.

You just couldn’t afford to be lazy.

This is just the front of this famous building… wait until you see the rest of the outside and what is inside past these fancy doors.

Who were the people who carved all these saints and martyrs? We will never know.

But they left us this incredible… wait… is that guy holding his own head??? The two angels on either side appear to be worried that he might fall over at any moment… which is understandable… and why is there a cow… or goat or whatever… and that weird dog thing over on the smaller column to the right? Undoubtedly it all makes sense from a biblical perspective.

These cathedrals are still in use, but the tourists far outnumber the worshippers. This is the true mark of the winners of this architectural battle of the wills. It might not be surprising that the French hold claim to many of the victors of this struggle, just as Versailles, which we visited earlier, is, arguably, the winner of the ‘which royal family can drain its own treasury to the point where the starving masses rise up in revolution just to build a palace that makes all the other kings and queens purple with royal jealousy’ contest.

But hey, what do I know, I was just there to take some pictures to share with you on a silly little blog.

Posted in My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged art, current-events, France, history, humor, notre dame, paris, photography, religion | 18 Comments

The day that Europe kicked my ass… part 2… (or); I know I’m not the boss of you, but I am going to tell you what to do the next time you find yourself up on the Eiffel Tower anyway…

Posted on August 3, 2015 by pouringmyartout

Okay, sorry about that, I know the camera looks a little obscene… but look at that look on my face… that is the look of sheer terror… and excitement… because I am standing on a clear piece of glass hundreds of feet above those tiny little people down there on the ground.

The next time you go up in the Eiffel Tower, there are a couple things you need to do. One of them is going to the lowest observation level and standing on the glass walkways. It is not for the faint of heart.

It didn’t bother Mollie at all, but 16-year-olds have no fear.

The other thing you need to do is take the stairs… no… don’t take them to get up the tower… what part of ‘the day that Europe kicked my ass’ did you not get??? You will be doing plenty of walking in Paris, trust me. Don’t wear yourself out walking up hundreds of stairs. But you should at least walk down from the middle level to the lower level when you go looking for those glass walkways. Don’t look at my bizarrely uneven nostrils! Look at that look of pure fun on my goofy face!

Yes, you will still get a workout. Yes, your legs will feel like rubber even before you try to walk 50 miles later on in the day. But you will not regret it. You will get to see the tower in a way that not everybody gets to see it if they just crowd onto the big old-timey elevators. It is like seeing behind the scenes. It is like looking up the Eiffel Tower’s skirt…

Okay, that last part sounded wrong… but it also sounded French… and, ironically, when I was on the tower the last time I was there, I actually caught a guy trying to take pictures up girl’s skirts, so don’t shoot the messenger.

If you were wondering what happened to that guy, well, let’s just say that I was with my other daughter and a bunch of other teenage girls at the time on a musical trip, and me and the creepy guy had a very heart-to-heart talk… about the ability of him and his camera to fly… and the probability that doing so from that height was actually survivable… and he saw the error of his ways… and he maybe became separated from the memory card in his camera somehow or other… who can remember details from ten years ago?

Anyway, I promise these are almost the last pictures of the tower you will have to look at…

But I also promise there are a lot of other pictures of a lot of other places all over Paris coming up in this little series…

Because we walked a lot that last day in the city of lights…

And you are all going along with me on this adventure.

Posted in My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged eiffel tower, France, humor, paris, photography, travel | 22 Comments

The day that Europe kicked my ass… part 1…

Posted on August 3, 2015 by pouringmyartout

It was our last day in Paris, and we sort of fell into that mindset where we became determined that we were going to see everything that there was to see… or die trying…

Yes, I know that I look happy and well rested as I stand there on a platform half way up the Eiffel Tower. This was still early in the morning, before we succumbed to the madness. We left mom at the hotel and Mollie, my wife and I strolled over and stood in the long lines to take the crazy elevators up the tower.

This was my third time in Paris and second time going up the tower, and I still haven’t made it all the way to the top. These pictures will give you an idea of how high up you are when you are on the middle two levels… I want to say we didn’t go the rest of the way up because of long lines and time constraints, and there is some truth to that… but seriously, that upper deck is freekin’ scary high up…

Oh look, there is the Sacre Coeur way over there… don’t worry, we will all end up there before too much longer…

I think that is the Les Invalides museum which I showed you pictures of in an earlier post, and our hotel is way on the other side of that… just to give you an idea of how far we walked just to start our day.

Ah, the ever enchanting river Seine.

There is the Arch de Triumph in the middle distance… we are going to end up there later also…

Even if, like me, you don’t really like heights, it is always awesome to see the views from way up in the air if you can manage it.

Well that picture is zoomed in, and doesn’t really give a sense of how high we were at all.

I mean, those aren’t small buildings down there.

Okay, that is more like it.

I have one more post about our adventures on the Eiffel Tower before we start in on the rest of that day.

Because it is possible to turn even something as cool as going up the Eiffel Tower into an even more exciting adventure.

Posted in My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged eiffel tower, France, humor, paris, photography, travel | 24 Comments

Stalking the Eiffel Tower…

Posted on August 3, 2015 by pouringmyartout

After our long day at Versailles, we took my mom out to dinner, and then strolled over to the Eiffel Tower. We were thinking that we might go up and enjoy the view from on high…

There I am… well, me and my absurdly mismatched nostrils…

We managed to arrive just as the first hourly light show was beginning.

Okay, that picture is actually left over from my trip to the military museum, but I figured I would sneak it in here anyway.

My wife must have taken that picture of Mollie and I walking with my mom.

On our first night in Paris, we had seen the tower in the distance, and now we were going in for the kill…

You don’t really get a sense of the size of the tower until you get really close to it.

But, in the end, we decided that the lines were too long, the sunset would be over by the time we got through them, and that we were all exhausted from walking around the king’s big house… so we decided to get up early and go up the tower first thing in the morning.

The next day was to be our last day in Paris, and it turned out to be one crazy-long day and we saw some awesome stuff, so I hope to see you here later.

Posted in My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged eiffel tower, France, humor, paris, photography, travel | 13 Comments

It’s not a poem… it’s a song… I just haven’t recorded it, turned it into a cute video, and stuck it on my blog with my other songs yet…

Posted on August 2, 2015 by pouringmyartout

Outward Bound

——————————–

Well, they’re starting final countdown, and the seatbelt light is lit

Goodbye mother earth, I’m gonna miss you just a little bit

Well the stewardess is pretty and she brings me one more beer

As I was a last farewell, and I shed a final tear

And if you ever start to wonder… where I can be found…

I’m outward bound… outward bound… (repeat X4)

I’m travelin’ 3rd class on this star liner, to space station one-sixty-three

Transfer to a deep space freighter, headed for the Dog Star colony

Gonna hitch a ride or work my, to the far frontiers of space

I guess you could say I’m resigning, as a member of the human race

If you ever think about me… and notice I ain’t been around…

I’m outward bound… outward bound… (repeat X4)

Mother Earth, I’m going to miss you, I’ll miss your sunset-tinted skies

I’ll miss the smell of roses, I’ll miss the stillness at sunrise

I’ll miss dogs and cats and horses, I’ll miss the seagull’s lonely cries

I’ll miss the little babies, I’ll miss the magic in a child’s eyes

I’ll miss the pretty girls, I’ll miss love’s first sweet surprise

But I won’t miss the bloodshed, where it’s the innocent who dies

Won’t miss the rich getting richer, as they chase their golden prize

I won’t miss the politicians, telling us their lies

Or the way the treat you, Mother Earth, as if you’re something they despise…

I’m outward bound… outward bound… (repeat X4)

So I’m sitting on this star ship, and I’m writing me this song

I’m gonna make my way to somewhere, ’cause it’s time to move along

I doubt I’ll ever make it back, to the place I once called home

I packed myself some bottles, I’ve got a long long way to roam

The engine started howling, it’s an awfully mournful sound

I’m outward bound…

Yeah, I’m leaving the planet of my birth, I’m leaving you, sweet Mother Earth

I’m outward bound…

Posted in Poems | Tagged art, fiction, humor, poem, song, writing | 34 Comments

A cesspool with teeth… AKA Donald Trump’s mouth…

Posted on July 31, 2015 by pouringmyartout

What happens when you fill a large, empty cavity with nothing but excrement, is a buildup of toxic gases thinly disguised as thought. It might actually be a good thing that he vents this buildup, because if it did ever reach a critical pressure we would have an explosion, and then his mouth would release a towering plume of ignorance… Ironically enough, when you consider his viewpoints on the immigration issue, the name for this orifice is much nicer in Spanish. They call it La Bufadora… ‘the blowhole’.

Posted in thinking about stuff | Tagged current-events, donald trump, humor, politics, trump | 7 Comments

Goodbye, Versailles… and a final word on living like a French king…

Posted on July 31, 2015 by pouringmyartout

I hope you have enjoyed my three-part series on how you too can live like a French king. If you follow my simple guidelines, you will soon be alienating poor people and making the rest of the fabulously wealthy feel like cheap imposters.

We have covered how to build a really big house and fill it with lavish yet useless items made from ludicrously expensive materials gathered from the far corners of the world. We discussed how the decorations should only be furnished by the most overpaid of artists, and how all of these element must be arraigned by only the snootiest of French interior decorators. We talked about how important the size of the grounds of the estate are to achieving the desired level of awe in all your visitors, and how the spirit of excessive wealth and a ‘money-is-n0-object’ mindset can be extended to every corner of your vast gardens.

But I forgot to mention the mirror room…

Louis XVI isn’t remembered as a good king. But he is remembered… as the guy who knew how to spend his money in such a manner as to make everybody else feel like small potatoes. His palace at Versailles might well be the best example of this mindset in Western history, but even in that monument to wasteful prerogative and blatant disregard for the people he was supposed to be ruling, there is still one room that stands out above all the others, not only as a showcase of just how classy Louis was, but as a memorial to the fact that you can’t really pretend to be living like a king of France unless you are completely and horrifyingly self-obsessed… And believe me, I might not know much about being rich or royal, but I do know something about being self-obsessed…

I give you Versailles’s famed ‘Hall of Mirrors’. I don’t care how big you make your big house, you are not really living like a French king unless it contains at least one big-ass hall full of mirrors.

Yes, the hall still has to have chandeliers made from so much crystal that to walk under them is to risk one’s own life. It still has to have statues… and they must be made from rare marble by the best sculptor of his day in the form of ancient gods and goddesses, with a mix of you and your family’s heads thrown on some of them, or else they must have been looted from actual historical antiquities collections or archeological sites. It must contain priceless imported marble walls where there aren’t any mirrors, and have lots of solid gold gilding…

And of course the ceilings must still be painted, also by exceptionally talented and costly painters, in an ancient gods motif… with lots more gold just to frame it…

But don’t be stingy with the mirrors…

Your invited guests and future tourists can waste their time looking at the ceilings.

You will be much too busy admiring yourself in the mirrors to be bothered with that nonsense.

And make sure the hall of mirrors is at least as long as a football field. You know the other rich people are going to laugh at you behind your back if you try to cut corners.

And, though I hate to be repetitive, it never hurts to throw in some more art featuring you… preferably attired as an ancient emperor… riding on a horse. Everybody loves horses, as I always say.

Also, make sure the doors on either end of the hall of mirrors reflect the grandeur people are about to experience… ha… reflect the grandeur… hall of mirrors… see what I did there?

I guess it is okay to squeeze a few windows into the hall, but only to remind people that the outside of your big house is just as impressive as the inside.

And that, as they say, is that. Just follow these simple steps, and you too can live like a French king… and not just any run-of-the-mill French king… but the most awe-inspiring, despised and soon-to-have-his-head-removed of all the French kings!

Posted in My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life, thinking about stuff | Tagged art, current-events, France, hal of mirrors, humor, lifestyle, paris, photography, style, travel, versailles | 26 Comments

Versailles… part 3… Even more lifestyles of the rich and French…

Posted on July 31, 2015 by pouringmyartout

When I did the first part of my now justifiably famous ‘lifestyles of the rich and French’, in which I gave you useful tips on how to live like a French king, I focused on how to build and decorate a house in the correct style. In this segment, we will focus on the outside of your new house…

It is important that your yard… or garden… reflect your status. The most obvious way to do this is with size… the scale should be on par with your new dwelling. In short, you should be able to stand outside your house and look in all directions and never see the end of your property. This will ensure that when your guests arrive to do you homage, they are suitably awed by the fact that it took them an hour of driving through a well-manicured landscape before they even reach your driveway.

Of course your yard will need to include many water features, and don’t skimp on the gold-gilded frogs and turtles… or the statues and expensive pieces of objet d’art.

Don’t just concentrate on the front and back yards either. The sides are just as important, and should also feature miles of well-trimmed hedges and shrubbery.

One of the main points to bear in mind is that, aside from impressing your guests with the vast scale of your yard, the yard itself should be designed in such a way that when you stop anywhere in the garden and gaze back at your big house, the view should highlight how big your house actually is, and in no way overshadow it.

Again, do not forget to utilize the most expensive artists you can find to throw in incredible pieces of art, even in the water features that are miles away from the house and will never be seen by anybody but the thousands of gardeners and groundskeepers that you employ. After all, you never know when a drunken guest might wander away from a garden party, become lost in the miles of hedge-mazes, and accidentally stumble upon one of these fountains, lakes, streams, ponds, rivers or waterfalls.

Remember, your yard is not really impressing anyone unless the only way to get from any one part of it to any other part of it requires a motor vehicle of some sort… or at least a carriage and some horses…

Don’t let that picture up there fool you! Your water features should never be this shade of green unless you have been dead for more than 200 years and the only people who ever visit your big house are working for the national park service or are tourists paying exorbitant prices to come and gawk at your past magnificence. This shade of green implies an algae buildup. Your water features should be blue… any shade of blue, no matter how unnatural it looks, and no matter how many chemicals need to be added… What do you care about the natural environment? You are living like a freekin’ French king!

See that water feature in the distance? That is an artificial lake, built so that guests can take boat rides on warm summer days. Those side branches are artificial rivers that lead to more huge round artificial lakes. All those statues and urns are much bigger than you might think from this picture. That giant horn-of-plenty artwork in the middle, you could drive a train into the mouth of that thing. Yes, it is a hideous abomination to the eyes… but you have to take into account the fact that it was done by absurdly overpaid famous artists most likely using insanely expensive materials. And this is just the backyard… where hardly anybody ever actually went… because they were too exhausted from the journey through the front yard. Man, those French kings knew how to do it right!

It is just a shame that the French national park service is too underfunded to keep this place up to the level of its former glory. You know those gold-gilded turtles and frogs were all spewing forth champagne back in the day.

And do not neglect to put a small, tasteful chapel off to the side of your big house to show how pious and holy you are.

If you follow the simple steps I have provided in this series, some day, long after you are gone, peasants will still flock to see how you once lived, paying a huge sum of money for the privilege of seeing it, and they will buy over-priced sandwiches and beverages and sit on the steps in your backyard, wondering what it must have been like to be you… you know… before the enraged peasants got fed up with the lavish lifestyle you lived while they were all starving, and came to your big house carrying torches and pitchforks, and dragged you away to your eventual execution…